Bleach: Dark and Light
by goldberry2000
Summary: .Old - Incomplete. A story set in an Alternate Bleach Universe. A tale of the Shinigami and the Hollow before the lines between the two became blurred. Supposedly...
1. A Night to Remember

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**Chapter One - A Night to Remember**

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The beast came down upon him a third time, and his guard was this time kicked aside with almost no effort. His body was covered in wounds that spewed blood in a manner that suggested even if the Hollow did not personally finish him off, he would die of blood loss shortly after its departure, regardless. His sword, his Zanpakuto, was thrown from his grip and landed with a silent clatter to the ground somewhere to his left. He assumed it would have made a "clatter", but the adrenaline rushing through him had long since decided that hearing was unnecessary to ensure his survival. Blood coated his hair and obscured his vision, but he could feel the Hollow's claws in front of him as the beast reared up for what would undoubtedly be the final attack. He tried to move but his legs just didn't seem interested; try as he might he could not manage to lift himself from the kneeling position he found himself in. It was over.

A girl's voice pierced the silence; "Rise from the East, Taiyouken!". A wave of heat washed over the duel followed by a light so strong that Kai could see it even with his blood-covered eyelids still tightly shut. The next noise was a pained roar as the Hollow that had been on the fast track to an easy meal only moments before was burned into atoms where it stood. As soon as the wave of heat passed, and the death scream of the Hollow faded, Kai's consciousness followed. He fell forwards and hit the concrete with a dull thud. The girl, his saviour, she supposed, was at his side almost immediately. She checked for a pulse and found one, and shook her head as she surveyed his wounds. There was no way a Shinigami should have gotten into such a state over a Hollow as weak as that one. What else had happened here?

She retrieved the Shinigami's Zanpakuto from where it had fallen, feeling the momentary wave of pressure that comes from touching the personification of another's soul, and returned to his side to see what she could do while she waited for backup. She definitely did not recognise him; in fact, why was he not wearing his Shihakusho? Sure, he was in the real world, but it was clear as day that he wasn't in a Gigai, so why was he dressed like a human? Even she wore the Shihakusho in her Shinigami form; it wasn't a choice she made when she left her body. Come to think of it, wasn't this guy a little young to be a Shinigami? Could it be that he was like her? No way; the guys she talked to from Squad Twelve assured her that it was a once in a lifetime thing to see a Substitute Shinigami.

A Substitute Shinigami, she pondered. A human who held spiritual pressure so great that they manifested powers like a Shinigami for themselves. It was rare enough that someone had enough awareness to see spirits, plusses, she reminded herself... but to have enough spiritual power to actually gain any kind of power... it couldn't be...

A figure materialising beside her knelt form made her jump, shocked her out of her thoughts. She straightened and turned to face the advance guard of the group sent for pickup. She came face to face with a member of Squad Two's Patrol Corps, supposedly the Shinigami closest by when she had put out her call. The Shinigami, a man, met her gaze and smiled curtly under his headpiece, evidently forgetting that she couldn't see such a gesture. She suddenly realised how much she liked the Special Forces uniform compared to the regular Shinigami one, liking the "ninja" look it gave them. She suddenly realised that she had been staring while she was thinking, and snapped to attention.

"Liana Sorrel. Substitute Shinigami." She awaited a response patiently but got nothing more than a nod. Somewhat annoyed by this, she said "And you are...?" The man seemed to shuffle somewhat in place before answering "Second Squad. Patrol Corps..." Realising he was supposed to have given his name and that she still expected it, he added "My name's not important." She smiled at this. Good, a stiff. They were always more fun.

"Well, 'Not Important', I found this guy-" She pointed at the unconscious form of the boy, "-fighting a Hollow about five minutes ago; he was losing, so I killed it for him. He's stable." She walked 'Not Important' over to the body, and waited some kind of response, once again, getting none for her troubles. "Hey listen, "Not Important", -And yes, I am going to keep doing that until you give me a name- it's kinda rude not to answer someone who's talking to you; I'm doing you a favour by calling you out now so you don't have to take back a dead body when your lazy-ass patrol drags itself out of bed and finds him later, so let's try and be a little more professional, eh?" The man continued to ignore her after this, so she gave up.

It was a few minutes later when a patrol made up of members of the Second and Fourth Squads arrived to tend to the boy's wounds, and within another ten minutes they were gone again, having taken him with them. The only two figures left in the park as the sun began to rise were Liana and 'Not Important', and it was only after the others had left that he suddenly became willing to talk to her.

"The boy that you saved, he's special." He offered, almost indignantly. "Special? How, exactly?" She pressed. "I can't give you the details, but as far as you need to know..." He seemed to change his mind about whatever he was going to say, "...he's like you. He's another Substitute." He began to look around as though he had said too much, and made a move to leave. She stood in his way, but he ignored this and simply used his Shunpo to flash past her into the breaking dawn and home to Soul Society.

She glared after him for a moment, more than a little certain that she'd never have to deal with him again, but also almost wishing she'd get the chance just to be difficult. The thought was gone as quickly as it came, and pushing the events of the night to the back of her mind, she headed home, to her family... and her body.

He had been there in the shadows the whole night, not sure what to do. There was a part of him that made him want to run into the fray, tear the attacking Hollow to shreds, and then do the same to the boy, the Shinigami. The sight of the Hollow or the Shinigami, he was not sure which, brought up uncontrollable anger within him, and it was about to break loose when the girl, another Shinigami, arrived to help the boy. It was at this point that he took a moment to collect his thoughts and calm down; he could have ended the Hollow and the boy, but the girl was another matter. She was strong. She would be fun to play with...

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Liana goes to school the morning after her rescue of the boy, only to find that there's a new transfer into her class! But things aren't quite as the seem; there is another, one slightly more familiar. To everyone, apparently. Next time: **Chapter Two - Hollow Intent**.

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_I realise that this chapter's fairly short, but I had an idea that I wanted to get started, and here it is. With any luck the story will all work out and I'll stick to writing it for long enough for it to develop into something worth reading. The next chapter will be up in a few days, and I would hope it will be quite a bit longer... _

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	2. Hollow Intent

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**Chapter Two - Hollow Intent**

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The morning after the battle with the Hollow for the boy and the meeting with the Second Squad Shinigami she had taken to calling "Not Important", she awoke late. Very late. A look at her beside clock told her that it was almost ten o'clock, making her just short of two hours late for school. She chose to forgo her usual shower in favour of a wash and throwing on the school uniform she had worn the previous day rather than hunting for a new one in her cupboard. She skipped breakfast entirely, deciding that after fighting Hollows all night, she could do a day at school without sustenance standing on her head. Rather than tempt fate, however, she grabbed a bottle of water and dropped it into her school bag just before jogging out of the door without a goodbye to her mother. The question came to her mind when she was halfway to school why exactly her her mother had not woken her, and she made a mental note to ask why she had not been disturbed when she got home that night. Heh, how immature; it was her who'd overslept, not her mother... To be honest, she supposed it was the sudden release of her Zanpakuto. Taiyouken really takes it out of her, although she managed to hide it well at the time, it had alot to do with the fact that she didn't have a great deal of reiatsu to begin with, and the sudden release of power left her lightheaded and generally drained. She should probably have flash stepped face to face with the Hollow, blocking its approach, and cut it clean in two with her sealed sword.

"Pffft... No point thinking about what I _could_ have done." She muttered to herself as she came into her school's road. "The point is I did it, and I'm-"

"--LATE!" A chalk board rubber smacked her hard in the forehead as she absent mindedly came round the corner. It fell away and clattered to her feet, leaving a solid red mark on her face where it had been a second before. Her whole body twitched with rage as she tried to blink the chalk from her eyes and keep the man who had thrown it in her vision, ready in case he did something else. She took a few seconds, but she regained the use of her voice enough to yell expletives at her teacher while she rubbed her face like a creature possessed.

"What the fuck kind of teacher does that to a student? ASSHOLE!" In the seconds that followed, neither said a word, and the silence in the air was broken only by Liana's heavy breathing as she struggled to keep her temper in check, using everything in her being to hold back from actually lashing out at the man who was supposed to be teaching a class, not hunting down a single latecomer. The tense situation was diffused almost immediately when Mr Wyatt broke a broad grin upon his forty-year old stubbly face, blue eyes seeming to glow with energy.

"You were spaced out. Kiara said she hadn't heard from you, so like a good parent, I came searching for my daughter's friend!!" He struck a super sentai pose, declaring "SUPER PARENT TEACHER!"

"And..." She was once again enraged by her best friend's father's idiocy, "...The board rubber?" He looked at her blankly for a moment before declaring;

"Proving that your reflexes need wo-" He never finished uttering 'work', as Liana had closed the gap between the two of them since he started the sentance, and by the time it was coming to a close was trying with some considerable effort to ram the offending board rubber down her teacher's throat. They fought for a few minutes before she finally gave in; he was a monster...

"Right," He seemed to straighten up and change completely with his utterance, "You are, as I said, you are late. As such, you will spend your lunch break in my office with me, and you will make up the last two hours of your schooling with me after school." He looked at her, as though daring her to challenge his authority. Rather than doing so, however, she walked past him and into the school gates and called back: "Fine, _whatever_."

She was almost to the main doors when he jogged by her and yelled, as he flew through the double doors and down the corridor: "Well never mind, then. It was supposed to be a punishment, and if you're going to be so casual then it's obviously not doing its job properly..." And he disappeared into the third classroom along, where she would be entering moments later. She sighed and slowed to a walk; he was an idiot, of course, but he did help her forget about the other life she led...

As expected, he once again made a big thing of her turning up late, this time in front of the class. She simply ignored it all and took her seat beside Kiara in the hope that eventually he would shut up. It came all the way to lunch time at one o'clock before he finished babbling about detention this and suspension that, but as they all knew he would, when he dismissed the class to go and eat, Liana was sent off along with everyone else. Kiara and Liana sat on a bench out in the school grounds away from everyone else and began to talk.

"Your dad's a moron. Sorry, he just is." She shrugged as if to emphasise the inevitability of the situation.

"Don't you think I know that? In truth you should be grateful that he's such an idiot or you'd have gotten in some serious trouble by now..." Ever the voice of reason, Kiara was right, of course. Liana was rubbing her forehead while she talked, still blinking constantly where chalk had gone into her eyes; they were bloodshot, the inflammation defiling her usually fairly beautiful green eyes, and her vision was blurry as a result. "He's still an idiot." She spat. They sat in silence for a little while, neither feeling much like eating, even Liana who had forgone eating breakfast. Well, she was _hungry_, she just couldn't be bothered to move all the way to the cafeteria to get food to eat. Suddenly Kiara clapped her hands and pulled a rather foolish face;

"OH!" The sudden noise made Liana jump, and glare at her; all over again she took in her friends features. She had long, blond hair and innocent-looking blue eyes which made people think she was the stereotypical "dumb blond". This wasn't the case; she was slow, and her thoughts tended to wander, but she was most definitely one of the smartest people she knew, always getting top marks in school exams without any visible effort. Liana spent a great deal of time with her, and she knew she never studied, either. Whether it was the fact that her father was her teacher giving her a reason to prove herself or something else, she was one of the most genuinely natural academic people she had ever met. She was suddenly brought back to conscious thought as her head was poked hard, followed by a whine normally attributed to small dogs;

"HEY. I'M TALKING. PHASE OUT AFTERWARDS." The noise alone would have jolted her back awake, there was no need to poke the newly formed bruise on her forehead as well... one or the other would have- "HEY. YOU'RE DOING IT AGAIN, LIKE... RIGHT AWAY!!" She poked her again. Liana raised her head and bit her finger. Hard. An ear-piercing scream was released from her lungs, and Kiara yanked it free, squealing all the way, head flailing from side to side. She took a few minutes to calm down, with tears streaming down her face and blood dripping from the newly opened wound on her suddenly puffy right index finger. She was about to squeal once again when Liana put her finger to her lips, having gone back to being calm and collected, and lent forward as if to whisper in her ear. Kiara seemed to think for a moment, then lent forward alongside her to listen. Liana breathed in deeply and then shouted:

"YOU WERE GOING TO SAY SOMETHING??"

After a short while, the two had cooled off and the stupidity was over. Kiara remembered what she had wanted to say, and told her friend about the new boy in the class that had transferred that morning. Liana looked at her blankly for a moment before querying what she had just heard;

"Wait, what? If we've got a new guy in the class, then why was your dad paying me so much attention?" She huffed.

"Well... We haven't done any work today. He insisted that Kai, this new guy, tell as everything about himself. Everything. Poor guy." She scratched her head disdainfully.

"Poor guy." She agreed.

"When Dad saw you walking down the road from the window and suddenly bolted out of the classroom, he breathed a sigh of relief and took his seat at the back of the room. He blends in perfectly." Well that's good, she thought in response. If you can't shrug of the old guy's abuse, you wouldn't last long at the school. "Oh I was gonna ask Ardell to come eat with us, but he had plans or something..." She visabley blushed. No wonder, she had swapped calling him 'Kai' to 'Ardell'; sounds like someone's smitten. "So, Kai Ardell..." She started in response, but before they could talk any longer, the bell rang, and they started moving back towards the main building. As the were walking down the corridor, Liana dropped back into the conversation.

"Do you fancy introducing us?" She asked suddenly, wanting to know the guy that had confused her so much she was getting his first and surnames confused.

"Yeah, sure, I'll point him out to you." Was the reply that came. _Not quite what I meant, but alright..._

She needn't have asked her to point him out for her. "Never mind" She said as she waved in her face as she went to guide her on over to him; she knew which one he was without any direction, he was the only one she didn't recognise in the slightest. She'd never seen him before in her life, so he had to be the one. She went over to the boy, tapped him on the shoulder, and mumbled "Kai, right?"

The boy looked up at her inquisitively, his red hoody and bandanna and weird (_almost glowing?_) yellow eyes being his most defining features, and shook his head with a strange grin on his face. "Don't be silly, Sorrel-chan; it's me, Ardell." Before she could process her response, _(this idiot doesn't know what his name is? Or was it just Kiara actually getting this guy's name wrong?)_ Kiara came up behind her in the same way as she had to the new kid, tapped her on the shoulder and said "Oh come on, no need to be stupid, is there?" Liana looked back, visably confused now; "Huh? But... New guy?" For a moment Kiara looked as confused as Liana did, and then there looked to be a pang of anger in her eyes. She gripped her shoulder and half guided, half dragged her out of the classroom door. The moment the door swung closed, she started to shout as if insane.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" She didn't wait for a response. "Look, I know you don't particularly like the guy, but he's my boyfriend, you could do me the favour of being at least _decent _towards him, couldn't you?" _Boyfriend? Wow, she didn't waste any time, did she? _Liana realised suddenly that something was wrong. If he wasn't the new guy, who the hell was, never mind the fact that she didn't know this 'Ardell' guy either? She waited for Kiara to continue shouting, but she seemed to have calmed down.

"Hey, I'm sorry, I've been under a bit of stress; on second thought do you mind showing me the new guy, please? I'll explain what just happened later." She could see that Kiara had her doubts about this, so she stressed "...Please." Her response was to throw her hands up in the air and walk back into the room, making no gesture for her to follow. Regardless, she did in fact follow.

She was led to the other far corner of the room, to a boy who was silently looking out of the window. She couldn't explain how she felt; she knew the guy wasn't someone she'd spoken to, but she was certain that she'd met him before. That was the only explanation she had for whatever was going o-- She never finished the thought, as all at once she realised where she had seen the boy before. It was the Shinigami she had saved the previous night. So Soul Society and intervened and given him somewhere to stay, under her wing, she supposed. But that didn't explain the other guy; she looked over her shoulder at Ardell and got a sly smile and a wave for her troubles. All of a sudden she understood why Kiara thought she didn't like him. Because she didn't. She had phased out again, and hadn't noticed that Kiara had started talking, so when she jolted awake she simply began to nod at whatever it was she had been saying until she caught on to the conversation.

"...And he doesn't live with his family at the moment, either." The boy, _Kai_, she corrected herself, looked up at her and smiled awkwardly. He was the complete opposite of that weirdo Ardell, and she took an instant liking to him. She had no intention of bringing up the events of the previous night until they got a moment alone, but was about to share some basic pleasantries when her phone beeped loudly at the same time as Mr. Wyatt came back into the room, presumably to _start_ the day's lessons. She looked at the flip phone as she took it out of her pocket, even though she knew full well what it was going to be. It was a Hollow, not three blocks from the school; there was no way she could ignore this. She had to leave right away. She looked up at Kiara's father and began to plead: "Sir?" "Go." Was his answer. This took her by complete surprise; did he know something, or was he just guessing that she was going to ask to leave, and knew that he couldn't physically stop her? She left without looking anyone in the eye. She was still thinking about Mr. Wyatt's behavior when she ran out of the school gates and began searching her pockets for her Gikongan, and did not notice the figure leaping across the rooftops behind her.

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Liana hunts down the Hollow as instructed, but does not notice until too late that she too is being hunted! Next time: **Chapter Three - A Cornered Animal.**

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_I've decided to do all of my chapters fairly short, for two reasons: Number one, it's more like a manga series that way, and Number Two, it's easier to write in short bursts and limits the chances of me losing interest in the writing. I really enjoyed writing this bit of the story; I can only apologise for the lack of action in this chapter, though. Those of you that think you know where the story is going, you're probably wrong! (sticks out tongue)_


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